


Exhibit A (3XH1B1T 4)

by Mithrigil



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Bloodplay, F/M, Interrogation, Roleplay, alternian legal system funtimes, everything is karkat's fault, gratuitous capslock
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-02-16
Updated: 2011-02-16
Packaged: 2017-10-15 17:37:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,039
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/163217
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mithrigil/pseuds/Mithrigil
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A foray into Alternian legal procedure. Or maybe just Terezi torturing Karkat a little. Sometimes it’s hard to tell.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Exhibit A (3XH1B1T 4)

In spite of the one naked lightbulb overhead, casting a wary circle on the dingy grey floor, the defendant shares Terezi’s blindness. She tied the blindfold herself, with knots she practiced over and over so that they’d have all the bights that the blind prophets would approve of. She can’t check her work except by running her tongue over them but that’s just fine, the cloth is a pleasant shade of burstberry gold, and besides, she can taste the defendant’s pinkish sweat and rub her cheek on the hard curly bristles of his hair. Oh, he likes that, even if he doesn’t like being blinded like her, without the advantage of her acute senses of smell and taste. But she doesn’t laugh at him, doesn’t tease him—not with words, anyway—doesn’t even breathe loud enough for him to hear it.

After all, most of the interrogation is in the intimidating silence.

“DAMN IT TEREZI I NEVER AGREED TO THIS AND YOU CAN TAKE THAT CANE AND SHOVE IT UP YOUR NOOK IF YOU COULD FIND IT WITH BOTH HANDS AND A FLASHLIGHT.”

...Or it would be, if Karkat would shut the fuck up.

Terezi sighs, and pulls away from him, leaning against the wall and rapping her cane in her hand so he can hear it. He can stew in the dark for a while. “Yes you did, citizen Vantas. Unless you’re saying that you don’t agree with the legal procedures of our society, in which case I should probably UP TH3 CH4RG3S TO TR34SON.”

“NO!” he shouts, which drowns out what would have been an intimidating slap of her cane, but the alternative isn’t so bad. Karkat sags in the ropes, pulls them a little tighter, and takes a couple of heaving breaths. It’s music to Terezi’s ears. “Fuck. FUCK. WHAT THE FUCK HAPPENED TO READING ME MY RIGHTS BEFORE YOU TAKE THE WHEEL OF THE SELF-INCRIMINATION SHORTBUS.”

“Oh that’s right, you have R1GHTS!” She grins. There might be a disadvantage to his being blindfolded because he can’t see her grinning. She’ll come up with a way to make him feel it later. Actually the thought’s really nice, of smiling where he can feel it. Maybe on his inner thigh when the blood starts pounding and the skin there is thin enough to feel everything through. Mm. Yes. Later. “Well, you have the rights of a M4GGOT, YOU TR41TOR! 4H4H4H4!”

“READ THEM, OR I’LL BUST OUT OF HERE AND LEAVE JUST ENOUGH ROPE FOR YOU TO HANG YOURSELF WITH, YOU NUBSUCKING SOPOR-SMOKING FUCKED-IN-THE-EAR VIGILANTE.”

“Oh, the defendant wants to be read his R1GHTS,” she sings, and now, she thinks, is a good time to get a little closer to him, smell the fear under his blustery (reddish!) bravado. “Well, I guess I can get started. The defendant has a right to an attorney, but I’m ignoring that. And he has the right to protest any submissions to torture, but I’m ignoring that too. Oh, and he has the right to S1T TH3R3 4ND SHUT TH3 FUCK UP, 1F H3 DO3SN’T W4NT TO 1NCR1M1N4T3 H1MS3LF L1K3 4N 1D1OT.”

He leans away from her shouting. That’s funny, you’d think he wanted to hear her, since he can’t see. Maybe it hasn’t kicked in yet. Oh well!

“Does the defendant have anything to say for himself?” she asks, bending at the waist so she can whisper it right in his ear. “Or does he just want me to get started?”

“THE DEFENDANT INVITES YOU TO READ YOUR OWN FUCKING RIGHTS AND SHUT THE FUCK UP.”

“Other than that?”

“...no,” Karkat says.

And what is that scent? That delicious, copper-honey scent? Is that a flush creeping up Karkat’s cheeks?

Terezi thinks she has the best matesprit _3V3R._

So she smacks him with her cane.

The effect is immediate. Karkat gapes, lips-over-teeth, and wrenches away as much as the ropes will allow, which isn’t much at all. He doesn’t scream. He doesn’t curse, not yet anyway. She can smell the welt pushing out of is shoulders, red under the plain grey surface of his skin. She wants more. She’ll get more.

“What the fuck,” he says, on rattling breath, like a keyboard smash. “What. The fuck. DID YOU JUST DO.”

“The court desires irrefutable proof that the defendant is a P34S4NTBLOOD MUT4NT,” she proclaims, “and thus a traitor in body as well as in mind! SO 1 G1V3 UNTO THE COURT 3XH1B1T 4, TH3 D3L1C1OUS BLOOD OF 4 TR41TOR!” She punctuates most of the nouns in that sentence with swings of her cane, cracking on Karkat’s shoulders and upper arms. She thinks she should maybe remove his shirt, but it’s too late since he’s already tied up, and besides, that would be unseemly in a court of law.

“YOU—ah—YOU RAINBOW-DRINKING PERVERT,” he yells, loud enough to cut through the rap of her cane on his clothing and the skin underneath. His blood is rushing to the surface everywhere, isn’t it? She can hear it in his throat. She wants to lick it. Later. Later, after she’s made the defendant submit to the legal system. Beautifully-colored insults fly out of him, and he might have bitten the inside of his cheek because the words smell like his blood too. Words like FESTERING HEAP OF BUTCHERED LEGAL JARGON and IMPFUCKING LIMPWRISTED GAPTOOTHED HORNSUCKER and WHO THE FUCK DO YOU THINK I AM, FUCKING EQUIUS? DO I LOOK LIKE I NEED A FUCKING TOWEL? NO, I LOOK LIKE I NEED A FUCKING LEGISLACERATOR all smell so wonderful.

She gives him a few more good smacks, lands one across the center of his back in a place that makes the insults stop and a dry, husky moan break past Karkat’s teeth. “The accused don’t G3T legislacerators. Only MOTH3R GRUB F34R1NG C1T1Z3NS get legislacerators.”

“ONLY HALF-IRRADIATED WIGGLERS GOING DOWN VRISKA’S LUSUS’ GULLET THINK THIS KIND OF CRAP IS HOT. I CAN FEEL MY BRAIN ROTTING EVERY TIME WE DO THIS ROLEPLAYING SHIT,” he hollers.

—He did not. He did not just say that.

He did, didn’t he.

“Going down WHOS3 GULL3T?” Oh, that’s not good, an interrogator as skilled as Terezi isn’t supposed to fray under pressure, but the end result is that she grabs him by the knot of the blindfold and yanks him against her chest. The ropes pull tight around his wrists, tight enough to make him shout, and the pressure she’s putting on his back must sting. His pulse is racing and she feels it through the cloth of both their shirts. The bruises are very close to the skin, aren’t they.

She should let the blood out, she thinks. It wants to escape so much.

She grabs the hem of his shirt and pulls it up. It’s nice rubbing against his skin, feeling the marks of her cane and how they make the welts catch on her shirt. When Karkat’s done growing his skin will be hard, won’t it, hard and smooth and cool like armor and statues and polished stone. She should break past it while she can, she thinks, while they both can.

“Terezi?” His voice is a little muffled—he must be trying to talk around the front of his shirt, whoops. “Terezi, if you’re gonna do it, fucking do it already—”

“Do what?” she asks, licking her chops. The tip of her tongue flicks on the nape of his neck. They’re that close.

She really likes the way he’s breathing now, how it’s straining the sides of his chest. There’s so much in him, even with the sweat leaking out.

“GET YOUR FUCKING PROOF, ALL RIGHT?” He throws back his head, grinds the knot of the blindfold against Terezi’s shoulder. “GET YOUR SICK CROSS EXAMINATION ON AND CUT ME LIKE YOU FUCKING WANT TO, TEREZI.”

“Ladies and gentletrolls of the tribunal, the defendant consents to this display,” she says, and lets him feel the triumph in her voice, right where she makes the first little scratch.

It’s just a flicker of her thumb-claw, just enough to let a little red out of the bruises, but that one little flicker opens him up and the smell is intoxicating. Terezi can’t help reeling a little, holds on to Karkat’s hair and thanks the Mother Grub that he’s got blunt horns because she doesn’t want the smell of her own blood to clash with his, not yet. And the smell goes so well with the sounds he’s making, tattered wet sounds like there are words he doesn’t want to get in the way. So she opens another welt, this one in a long stripe, inhales the scent and feels him tremble all along her body. There’s something she could say about flushed quadrants and red desires and the way his blood makes her feel but she leans down and gets a closer smell instead, even touches her tongue to the scratch.

It’s not about proof right now, never mind what all of Terezi’s scalemate tribunal needs to hear in order to consult for a proper verdict. Sure, Karkat’s blood is weird, delicious red all through, but Terezi isn’t going to sentence her own matesprit to death by hanging for bloodcrimes.

Though that would be kind of awesome.

She’d miss the pathetic way he struggles and shouts, even though he gave her permission. She’d miss the smell most of all, of course, and the taste, exploding like the sweetest salted-honey on her tongue. She’d miss the way he rubs against her when he should be flinching away, even if, well, he can’t flinch away. She’d even miss the way he curses and pretends not to like anything at all, least of all her.

His back bleeds on her shirt and under her claws and at the chapped cracks in her lips. “You know,” she says, like the scratches are listening to her, “I should ask you what you smell, Karkat.”

“—What?”

“I should ask you what you smell,” she repeats, because really, he can’t be faulted for his lack of perceptive faculties in the face of her overwhelming justice. “I should get you to confess. All the evidence is at hand, Karkat. Are you a P34S4NTBLOOD MUT4NT TR41TOR?”

“Terezi—”

“CONF3SS, MUT4NT! CONF3SS! TH3 L1GHT OF JUDGM3NT 1S UPON YOU! F33L, B4S3 ON3, THE WR4TH OF TH3 4LT3RN14N SUN 1N 1TS R1GHT3OUS SPL3NDOR!” She rakes her claws down to his hips and holds him flush against her, digging in deep. “CONF3SS! SUBM1T! TH3 PROS3CUT1ON W1LL N3V3R R3ST UNT1L SH3 H34RS YOU PROCL41M YOUR TR34CH3RY!”

“FUCK YES TEREZI PLEASE—”

“PL34S3?”

“I MEAN YES! YES. I STAND AGAINST HER IMPERIAL CONDESCENSION! SHE CAN GO FUCK HERSELF WITH A NARWHAL! OR FEFERI’S LUSUS, I DON’T FUCKING KNOW! OR CARE! FUCK HER! FUCK ALTERNIA! FUCK ME, TEREZI, GET THE FUCKING BUCKET AND MOP UP MY BLOOD WITH WHATEVER YOU’VE GOT AND WHATEVER ELSE GOES INTO IT I DON’T EVEN FUCKING CARE, WE CAN DRESS THE ECTOBIOLOGY COMPOUND UP LIKE AN IMPERIAL DRONE AND TIE FUCKING BANNERS ON ITS HORNS.”

...Oh.

“Karkat, I think you’re taking this a little too seriously,” Terezi says.

He heaves two deep breaths that make him shiver, down to his bones. The luscious smell of his blood fills the air, and Terezi’s a little dizzy already, but the way Karkat sinks against her and quakes through his knees means he’s probably a little spun out himself. “Oh,” he says quietly, and “shit,” and then, “fine. I THROW MYSELF ON THE MERCY OF YOUR MORONIC FUCKING COURT, IS THAT BETTER?””

“Much,” she says, and kisses him on the nape of his neck, right where his spine curls down. His upper vertebrae are like his horns, Terezi thinks, and she nuzzles them after she’s done kissing. “Save it for when I have to have a change of heart and rescue you from the worker mines.”

“Oh,” he says. “Okay.”

“But for now,” she says, grinning, and leaning down to lick one last stripe down the scratches and welts on his back. “I think I’ll leave you here so you can think about what you’ve done, while the tribunal D3T3RM1N3S YOUR F4T3.”

“MY FUCKING ARMS ARE GOING TO FALL OFF IF YOU LEAVE ME HERE, TEREZI.”

“THAT’S PROS3CUTRIX T3R3Z1 TO YOU, MUT4NT TR41TOR SCUM!”


End file.
